Rehosted and hotlinked webcomics will be removed, unless you are the creator. Please submit a link to the original comic's site, and possibly a mirror in the comments. Tumblr-exclusive comics are the exception, and may be rehosted, however if the artist's name or watermark are removed, the post will be removed. (*)(*)

14. No SMS or Social Media Content (including Reddit)

This includes direct linking to reddit threads, reddit comments, other subreddits, facebook profiles, twitter profiles, tweets, embedded tweets, and screenshots of the above, including text messages, omegle, instagram and others. This also includes any other sites that may be considered social network sites. Please read the announcement.

Hate speech and bigotry will be removed at the moderators' discretion.

Serial reposters may be filtered

What do I do if I see a post that breaks the rules?

Click on the report button, and send us a message with a link to the comments of the post.

What should I do if I don't see my post in the new queue?

If your submission isn't showing up, please don't just delete it as that makes the filter hate you! Instead please send us a message with a link to the post. We'll unban it and it should get better. Please allow 10 minutes for the post to appear before messaging moderators

The bar is set pretty low if "it's not illegal" is somehow a retort to that other post.

Stop and frisk has been horrible for non-whites; but it's legal and they have the authority so hey, can you blame the police?

The legality of it - especially the dragnet - is not certain. I'd say they are acting outside of the enormous authority given to them, but the ACLU can handle that argument.

Not everyone is complicit. I can't control your vote, and I can't control what actions the people I vote for take after I help put them in office. Americans are morons, though, so it's not like I don't agree that a lot of this is the majority's fault. But even if you go that route, these kinda of surveillance capabilities and practices fall into another category altogether.

No, actually, the law does not make it their job to collect information of this magnitude, and it is not constitutional and is not a power given through surveillance laws. Those who are supposed to be overseeing this in Congress didn't even know how widespread it has been. And I didn't elect anyone to the NSA. Neither did you. I did not see a bubble for that.

All of this to say that what's happening is going on without - well who the hell knows really - most of our elected officials even knowing about it and then the ones who do know of it are either appointed or elected and deny whatever the hell they want and end up at the Supreme Court, where the case is dismissed because the plaintiffs have no standing because all the government has to do is wave the "national security special super duper top secret" wand to make everything go back to normal.

How the hell do you assume it is someone else's responsibility but those who are directly involved in making decisions? Because if the voters are totally responsible simply because they voted for these members of Congress and this dude for president, how far back do you take it? Do you take it back to Bush, and those Congressional sessions, and what, now because of the election cycle Americans chose this dude and this lady who eventually voted for this Supreme Court nominee who then screwed us over with this decision or that decision?

I get how democracy works but you do not apparently. Americans are idiots, yes, but at the end of the day it is not within your power or mine because whatever we do with our votes, we've already been helped or hindered by past cycles and the guy we voted for may decide he actually does like surveillance and the guy he has working under him likes it even more.

The FISA/Patriot Act are terrible and shouldn't have been passed, and more people should have seen this last week's revelations coming, but that doesn't change the fact that what's happened is shameful, nefarious, and unconstitutional.

I stopped reading when you made an argument against yourself by saying something about congressional oversight. NSA is not a toddler. It went beyond the scope of the law and intentionally said no, we don't do this, when asked about it.

People are involved. We could have all elected pro-privacy officials and ended up with the same result. People - scarily thousands of people - operate these systems and know about what they do. Only one of them informed Americans and, it appears, Congress.

I think many assumed it was done illegally and, like me, were unaware that, since Bush left, the abuses under the Patriot act done then have since been made legal.

It's like the difference between your creepy uncle who you suspect ogles female family members and when he announces to the room one day, "Ladies, I'm going to examine your breasticles for a moment; please stay still. I have a professional license for this."

The only difference is that the creepy uncle is the executive branch of the U.S. government, and they only whispered it at the time.

With advances in computing power and data storage, anyone who didn't think something like this was going on was pretty naive. They don't care about the lovey-dovey call you made to your wife. They don't care about the calls to your dealer for more weed. They care if you're a threat, as in, a terrorist that wants to cause harm for funsies. Lighten up, this is the new world we live in.

I don't get the "they've been doing this for years, so it's fine" argument... It's always been a problem, it's just now thanks to those leaked documents, people are finally able to understand just how terrifying the patriot act is.

This was leaked in 2006. We're going to forget about it in 3 months and move on to the next bull shit crisis.
Then they're going to change the name from PRISM to something else, just like they did in 2006 when it was called MARINA and PINWALE.

Certainly it started at least with Bush, but Obama has had five years to look at it, realize there are issues in conflict with a free country, and shut it all down. But instead, he's allowed the program to grow to the point where at least 300 million citizens have been affected.

Obama voted for retroactive immunity for telecoms as a senator, and as a President -- in charge of the NSA, CIA, and FBI -- he has allowed the explosive growth of a surveillance state. He should have shut it all down. He should have prosecuted Bush for crimes. But he didn't. And now he's the one who should be prosecuted. He should suffer the same fate as Nixon (who was guilty of so much less) and stand as a historical warning for presidents who hunger for too much power.

So Obama has become a dictator in the past few years and is able to supersede congress and make laws and start or stop government programs? Because last time I checked, which was during his first election so it could have changed I suppose, congress is what does everything in DC. The president is literally a figure-head and has no direct authority over things like this.

The system of checks and balances within the U.S. federal government was set up so that none of the three branches had too much authority. So the Legislative branch (Congress) writes the laws, the Executive branch enforces those laws, and the Judicial branch interprets the laws and makes sure everything is constitutional.

Its not a problem because the gov't was doing it. It was kinda the elephant in the room really. It wasn't until shit like PRISM was leaked to the public that there is blatant proof of it...

Basically, the outcry is because they got caught snooping. But yes, I agree; romney, obama, bush, even mccain, every one of them avoided discussing the patriot act and everything that happened because of it. A rose by any other name I suppose.

I just get pissed because people keep saying Obama is "big brother" because of this program but he had little to do with it. If it's deemed legal by a secret court, and he's not the supreme ruler of the united states, he has little to do with being able to end it. Congress is how it would be ended. Congress puts these things into action. Not the president.